


not even the rain

by bartonbones



Category: The Hour
Genre: (even when he doesn't deny it at all), Doomed Relationship, F/M, Sort Of Fluff, even if he tries to deny it, freddie lyon loves bel rowley, relationship angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 00:48:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1490548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bartonbones/pseuds/bartonbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.)</p><p>A look at Camille and Freddie's relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i felt like camille appearing as freddie's wife in season two was really sudden and surprising, and maybe not handled as well as she could have been, but something drew me to their relationship and i really wanted to explore it more thoroughly than they did in the show. enjoy, and tell me what you think if you'd like!

Freddie left to France shortly after his last unanswered letter. He sent her a postcard—an _apology_ , for daring to ask her to meet him here, cruelly asking her to leave her whole life—packed his few things and left.

Bel's refusal— _silence_ —made the city of San Francisco lose its luster entirely, and after awhile, everything he'd grown to love about it muddled itself, became ruined, annoyed him. Everything he'd wanted to show her, everything he'd wanted to make her love too, so that they were side by side again and passions in tune and excitedly, boldly pushing forward, he hated. His old familiar British cynicism caught up with him at last, and America was no longer the bright, shining country of freedom and promise, but just somewhere else where he wasn't good enough.

He considered going back home, to an empty apartment, filled with dusty memories, to a joblessness that was nothing less than his fault, to Bel, though perhaps her silence meant she hated him now. Maybe he'd go back to nothing. If she did hate him, he wouldn't blame her, but he couldn't face that yet.

So he went to _France_.

He didn't know a lick of French. Freddie only barely got by on who spoke English, on bread and cheese sandwiches for every meal because it was cheap, on a small room that served as a living space rented from an old woman who was kind and didn't ask for more money than he had.

It was...something else, something different, and though his fingers tapped on typewriter keys, he couldn't force them to write another letter. France would be no more alluring to Bel than America was, because it wasn't where her work was, and from her bankers to Hector to Freddie, her work was always going to be more important than anyone else.

He told himself that, over and over, that it was more important than _everyone,_ not just him.

In the end, he met Camille.

She wore flowers in her short-cropped hair like a crown, pants instead of skirts and flat shoes that didn't click on the pavement. She spoke with an accent, a slight hint to her voice, and something else entirely that Freddie couldn't decipher.

They met in a park and got absolutely drunk on each other.

Her, because every other man infuriated her. Freddie did not pretend she was anything but equal, and was such a person that made her feel that if anyone was superior, it was her. A refreshing, new feeling that was absolutely intoxicating. He was cute and entertaining and precious and maybe, she hadn't meant to fall in love quite so much as she had.

Freddie, because she was someone else, because she laughed with sweet entertainment when he spoke passionately, because she _listened_ and _indulged_ , and said he was child-like instead of child- _ish_ , with no negative connotation to the adjective. Because she loved poetry, knew far more of it than he did, would read it in French then English so that he could taste the differences.

He could listen to anything if she read it, lying next to each other on a mattress that had no frame, in his small room with wine she brought and bread and cheese he'd had, a book in her hands and leaning close to him, so close that he could smell her perfume and the soap she used to wash her hair.

They lay like that now, and she smells like roses and storms, and soap, and she brings a different book every time, but this one is hand-written, loopy and scrolled, embellished and missing grammar. From looking over her shoulder, he can not decipher it.

"Is it yours?" he asks her, turning his head to hers instead of awkwardly craned to see the pages. "Your poems."

Camille shakes her head, a smile on her face that is just slightly unreadable.

"I write the ones I like best," she says, and Freddie understands, settles in to the mattress and shuts his eyes, waiting for her to start. There's a faint smile on his lips, feeling content and loved and _enough_.

She begins reading, in French, and her words sound something like a song, a lullaby. He does not open his eyes at all, not even when he takes sips from his wine, because he childishly fears that opening them will make this feeling vanish, her voice stop and crumble into nothing silence.

He doesn't even have to do that, for the feeling to crash like symbols at its end.

All it takes is a shift in language, Camille's hand idly smoothing his unruly hair.

"Somewhere I have never traveled—" and Freddie's breathing hitches, just slightly, "Gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence—"

His comfortable, safe, enough of a feeling is stifled, and the poem feels intruding, instead of comforting, when he didn't know what her words were.

He opens his eyes.

"Camille—"

She shushes him, continues, "In your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which I cannot tough because they are too near—"

Which is fine, because he doesn't know what he'd say, how he'd articulate the feeling of betrayal, of appalment at that poem from her lips, when it has only ever belonged to Bel. It feels like adultery.

"Your slightest look easily will unclose me, though I have unclosed myself as fingers—"

He can't listen to her, thinks of putting his hands over his ears to block them out.

He knows why he can't hear it.

He knows that if he thinks of Bel he can never love Camille, that horribly, the one time he is enough for someone, they will not be enough for him. He can not afford that kind of thinking, that kind of need, when he has finally found someone who does not find his love unsuitable, like no one else has ever found it.

Knows that if he thinks of Bel, he will see in Camille what she is _not_ —see what she will never be, what he will never have.

He thinks of words, of how they can just _belong_ to someone—these do not belong to Camille, nor to him, but here she is, lying with him on a old mattress with older still sheets, in an unfurnished apartment, her expensive wine and his cheap everything else.

"I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens," she says, her voice soft, "Only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses—"

Freddie swallows, and finishes for her.

"Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands."

He thinks of hers—neither large, nor small, not Bel's, but filling in the spaces in his.

Camille makes a face.

"You know it already," she says, "You knew it."

"I can't not know everything," he blinks, then smiles, leaning on his arms to kiss her cheek, which she smiles and leans in to, "Not even for you."

She smiles, devilishly, and returns the kiss, but this time on his lips.

"I thought all you read was James Bond."

"One cannot live on Bond alone, Camille."

That earns a laugh, a real one, at what he said instead of how he said it, and she kisses him on the nose, playfully, then on his lips, passionately.

He pauses a moment, fighting the feeling of adultery—if that was against Bel or Cammile or both—before he returns it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> words spoken in a sleep-filled haze, loaded questions, lies that aren't lies yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't really know what i'm doing with this fic but they won't leave me alone so probably just a series of inexcusably short snap-shot-y things with a thin semblance of connection if any? i dunno. enjoy though!

Freddie forgets e.e. cummings as fast as he makes himself forget everything else.

It takes: Camille sleeping on his mattress instead of going home, sunlight filtering through broken window shades, and words spoken in a sleepy haze.

She must think he's still asleep, the way her hand brushes against his hair, gentle and nearly tentative at first, then rhythmic and comforting. He's never slept well, even less so in this past year and _never_ not in his own bed, but he's also not ever had anyone stroking his hair gently and lovingly before, never woken from fitful dreams to gentle humming.

Maybe, once, when he was small and his mother alive and his father—alive, and _well_ , but never since then, and, God, the feeling is _divine._ He smiles, slightly, as if in sleep, and leans in to it. He knows if he wakes up she'll stop, so he pretends not to wake at all, but can't resist leaning in closer.

If Camille notices his wakefulness, she doesn't react.

He hears a lighter and smells the smoke of her cigarette, but even that does not make him want to move. Absolutely nothing, in this entire world, of all its stories and women and poems, cigarettes and wines, makes him want to move from this _exact spot._

"Je t'aime," It's spoken between drags of a cigarette, soft and breathless and tentative, unsure, like she's tasting the words on her tongue, just to see.

Freddie doesn't know much French, even after meeting Camille, but he knows what Je t'aime means, and he knows that right then it's the only thing that makes him move from his (comfortable, _safe_ ) spot.

He moves his head, her hand falling, and cracks an eye open at her.

"Pardon?"

"You were awake," she says, "You cow."

"What did you say?"

He tries not to let his voice show any incredulousness, any offence—because he's _not_ , not offended to be loved by her, or by anyone, except he's trying to think of all of the times he's heard those words, and all of the times he hasn't, and all of the times someone has actually _meant it_.

He's good at muddling up relationships, whether purposely or accidentally. Camille is the first girl in a very long while, a fairly grim amount of time, if he's honest, in a place where there has been for so long only one person. Other girls may have told him they loved him—after he's said it, after it would be too awkward to say anything else.

He supposes, after a while, he'd just given up.

He's not an easy person to love, he knows. He's aggravating, cruel at times, fixated and hardly has the psychique of Cary Grant. On top of which he's always been half married to his work, to news, and usually half-hung on someone he won't have him.

Camille is practically the only one who's caught him without either, since he left Bel and news in Lime Grove, leaving only with savings and a suitcase.

Maybe that's why she's saying it first.

Camille takes another drag of her cigarette, leaning against the wall and shutting her eyes, a slight quirk to her brow.

"I love you."

"Ah." Freddie swallows, lets his head fall back.

"And?" she prompts.

There are five cracks in the ceiling that Freddie can see, which he pretends are more interesting than they actually are, running his thumb over his fingers.

"And?"

"Do you love me?"

"Yes," says Freddie, quickly, not looking at her. Then he flicks his eyes back up, jaw set, and resolve in his eyes. "Yes, of course I do. I love you."

She smiles, and does not know that it takes more than it should to make those words form on his tongue.

But he's glad he says them. Thinks that, this _must_ be love. There isn't any other word for it, he must love her, he _does_ love her, her laugh and her french and her short, not-blonde hair and captivating not-blue eyes, which shouldn't matter (but they do). He loves her, like loves stories. She practically is one, with her dangerous half-smiles and poems.

He loves her because he wants to continue chasing her, find out about her, and that is what he loves. The thrill of the chase, maybe, the thrill of her.

But he does love her.

"I do," he repeats, to be sure. "I love you."

They look at each other for a moment, the world still save for the thin smoke of her cigarette rising to the ceiling. Then she turns, and puts it back between her lips, staring at the wall. She exhales, blinks, smiles and turns back to Freddie.

"You're lying."

Laugh, Freddie thinks.

That would be a normal reaction. Laugh, be incredulous, he thinks.

Not love you? How _could_ I.

But that isn't what happens, even though that's what he know he ought to do.

He sits up, ramrod straight and stares at her.

"I'm not lying," he said. His eyebrows are drawn, mouth set in a thin little line. "I love you."

She pauses, like she hadn't expect the sudden intensity, the change in mood.

Even Freddie can admit the words sound different now—before the were tentative, tasting, testing. Thin and gentle, dissolving like cigarette smoke. But now it's more definite, more sure, less testing and more _convincing,_ trying to convince her that he does.

Camille stares for a moment longer, then laughs, pushes him back down so that he's lying, a smile curling on her lips.

"You are, by far," she kisses the crown of his head, holding her cigarette out so that it doesn't burn anything, "The silliest boy I have ever met."

He smiles, even though part of him is still reeling, why would you say that why would you joke about that why would you  _say that_ , and returns her kisses, which now travel to his lips.

"Am I?" he asks. He has been so for many people, he thinks. Lix has said, Bel has said.  _Boy,_ as if his arrogance or excitement or passion or petulance could only ever have belonged in a child he never grew from. He's older than her, though by five years, he found out, which is so _odd_ because she always makes him feel so much younger. 

He isn't younger, though, and he's done this before.

He has been young, twenty-something, falling in to fresh love.

He knows that it doesn't work like that, that years are needed, that emotional maturity is something that needs be achieved, that relationships are _complicated,_ more so than kissing and loving and reading poems.

Knows that sometimes, even time won't iron them out.

He isn't stupidly young, he _knows._

But like e.e. cummings and a home he has to go back to, like blonde hair and blue eyes, he forgets.

 


End file.
